Guide/Food

This Guide will explain what your Duplicant can eat and how much you will need.

Good to know

 * A Duplicant requires 1000kcal per cycle on normal difficulty settings (default).
 * The Bottomless Stomach trait will increase the Duplicants food needs by a further 500kcal per cycle.
 * Planning food for your colony can be made clear and easy using the Oni Assistant Food Calculator
 * There are eight Food Quality Levels: Ambrosial [+6], Superb [+5], Great [+4], Good [+3], Standard [+2], Poor [+1], Terrible [0] and Grisly [-1].
 * Higher quality food will result in a higher morale bonuses: Ambrosial [+6] and Superb [+5] +16 Morale, Great [+4] +12 Morale, Good [+3] +8 Morale, Standard [+2] +4 Morale, Poor [+1] +1 Morale, Terrible [0] 0 Morale, Grisly [-1] - 1 Morale.
 * Edibles that are not stored in a Refrigerator or a Ration Box in an area with freezing temperatures or a sterile environment (such as in pure CO2) will decay within a few cycles.

The Beginning
When your Duplicants arrive in the Colony, they do not have many choices. You start with 16,000 kcal of Nutrient Bar in your Ration Box. They can collect accessible Buried Muckroot plants, which do not provide seeds and are not replantable. They will find wild growing Mealwood plants that can be harvested for Meal Lice, or less likely wild growing Bristle Blossom plants that can be harvested for Bristle Berries. As soon as they find enough Raw Metal, they can build a Microbe Musher which can provide basic meals:
 * Mush Bar - (Quality: -1) - made from 75kg dirt and 75kg water per ration (800 kcal).
 * Liceloaf - (Quality: 0) - made from 1,200kcal Meal Lice and 50kg water. Provides 1,700 kcal (500 gain).

While your Duplicants eat dirt or lice, you can start researching Basic Farming. This will give you access to the Planter Box. Mealwood in Planter Boxes or later in Farm Tiles requires 3 cycles to ripen and yields 600kcal of Meal Lice per harvest and plant, compared to 12 cycles when growing wild.

Hint: Using the Microbe Musher recipes consumes a lot of water. The water cost of the recipes quickly adds up and the water can easily become a carrier of Germs.

When you have researched Basic Farming
The dupes can now build Planter Boxes. Planter Boxes are considered ugly, they have a decor value of -10. Unlike the Farm Tile however it can be built on top of air permeable tiles or on top of a door that when opened will disable the plant's growth cycle. It supports the following 4 edible plants:
 * Mealwood - needs fertilization of 10 kg of dirt per cycle. Needs a temperature between 10 and 30 °C and the air pressure above 150g.
 * Dusk Cap - it grows only in darkness and CO2 atmosphere - naturally Dusk Caps should be placed at the bottom of your colony. Beware of the temperature needs as well - Dusk Caps grow only between 5 and 35°C. The only attention a Dusk cap needs from Dupes is a supply of 4kg Slime per cycle.
 * The Dusk Cap does not require water when growing or in it's Fried Mushroom recipe, but it does requires slime.
 * Slime typically hosts Slimelung Germs unless it's been processed with an Ore Scrubber, a chlorine environment, or simply heating it up (do note that overheating slime will turn it into dirt!) to kill the germs off. Note that slime can also be broken down into Algae via the Algae Distiller, producing Polluted Water as a byproduct, should you need to consider generating/mining slime versus other food sources for the food production process.
 * Sleet Wheat - this one actually requires to be grown in a Frozen Biome or in an otherwise temperature controlled place, as it requires temperatures between -55 and 5°C.
 * Sleet Wheat requires only 4kg of Fertilizer and 20kg of Water per cycle but it takes 18 cycles to ripen. The Sleet Wheat then produces 18 Sleet Wheat Grain - which are also seeds.


 * Bristle Blossom requires 6 cycles to ripen in a Planter Box or later in Farm Tiles or in a Hydroponic Farm, compared to 24 cycles when growing wild. Each plant yields 1600kcal Bristle Berries per harvest. Bristle Blossom tolerate colder environments, 5-30°C, also require a light source and fresh Water supply.

Because carrying water will keep your dupes running all day, you should research Agriculture for the Hydroponic Farm that allows water supply through Liquid Pipe s. Bristle berries may be eaten raw, but can easily be cooked into Gristle Berries or Stuffed Berries. Sleet wheat may be used to cook either Frost Bun or Pepper Bread from it increasing the calories per gram, yet another reason to research Meal Preparation quickly.

You have researched Meal Preparation
You have now unlocked the Refrigerator which keeps your food from rotting, but requires power.A more elegant solution to prevent food from rotting is to store the food in an unpowered Ration Box in sterile atmosphere, i.e. not in Oxygen or Polluted Oxygen.

Now you have access to the Electric Grill that allows you to make the dirt taste better (Mush Fry, 0 quality and 250 extra calories), but it has more recipes involving fruits and seeds you might have found while exploring your colony. Learning about growing and harvesting them in your colony has a guide on its own, here we consider you managed to harvest Bristle Berry, Dusk Cap, Sleet Wheat and Pincha Pepper. The Electric Grill improves food quality and increases calories. Sleet Wheat Grain and Pincha Peppernut are not edible on their own, but serve to a few Electric Grill recipes.

Crunching Numbers




Often the question is, how many plants do I need to maintain to feed my Duplicant. Each plant has its own growth time, number of harvests and intervals between harvests, but using a little math you can calculate the average output per plant in kcal per cycle. Knowing that a Duplicant usually needs 1000kcal per cycle you can calculate how much plants need to be harvested for direct consumption or for use in any recipe you want to cook. The following table gives you numbers for the daily consumption of a single Duplicant. These numbers are absolute minimum under most optimal conditions. Delays in harvesting or planting and stifling during growth will not increase the cost, but will slow down growth. When plants are required for given food, the required irrigation and fertilization are listed, too, recalculated to the number of plants specified.